# GazeDirector: Fully Articulated Eye Gaze Redirection in Video

## TL;DR

GazeDirector is a novel model-fitting approach for fully articulated eye gaze redirection in videos, enabling precise, photorealistic manipulation of gaze direction without person-specific training.

## Contribution

It introduces a new method combining model-fitting, eyelid warping, and 3D eyeball rendering for accurate and realistic gaze redirection in videos.

## Key findings

- Outperforms recent gaze redirection methods, especially at large angles.
- Works effectively without person-specific training data.
- Successfully applied to YouTube videos for visual behavior manipulation.

## Abstract

We present GazeDirector, a new approach for eye gaze redirection that uses model-fitting. Our method first tracks the eyes by fitting a multi-part eye region model to video frames using analysis-by-synthesis, thereby recovering eye region shape, texture, pose, and gaze simultaneously. It then redirects gaze by 1) warping the eyelids from the original image using a model-derived flow field, and 2) rendering and compositing synthesized 3D eyeballs onto the output image in a photorealistic manner. GazeDirector allows us to change where people are looking without person-specific training data, and with full articulation, i.e. we can precisely specify new gaze directions in 3D. Quantitatively, we evaluate both model-fitting and gaze synthesis, with experiments for gaze estimation and redirection on the Columbia gaze dataset. Qualitatively, we compare GazeDirector against recent work on gaze redirection, showing better results especially for large redirection angles. Finally, we demonstrate gaze redirection on YouTube videos by introducing new 3D gaze targets and by manipulating visual behavior.